Vehicle chases are common when the person driving a vehicle tries to escape the law enforcement personnel by driving away at a high rate of speed. A study involving interviews conducted in jail cells found that over half of the inmates were willing to run at all costs from the police and almost two-thirds of them believed they would not get caught, while studies show that police are successful in apprehending suspects in a fleeing vehicle in almost ninety percent of the chases. The tools and methods available to law enforcement to stop a fleeing motor vehicle are woefully inadequate. In some situations a chase begins after a police officer approaches a motor vehicle. On these occasions prevention of a possible chase could save property damage and/or bodily injury, but no vehicle interdiction devices are available that can be implemented from the rear of the motor vehicle without damaging the vehicle. The law enforcement personnel are often in a “no win” situation for if they try to chase the vehicle, it results in a collision about one-third of the time with property damage in twenty percent of the chases and, of even greater concern, bodily injury of the police and innocent persons in equal numbers about thirteen percent of the chases. Further, many chases result in some litigation against the public safety department and it is not clear that the convicted criminals are generally sentenced to a significantly longer actual jail term if they run from law enforcement. On the other hand, law enforcement personnel can hardly merely allow the escapee to flee and be allowed to escape. Some states have considered passing laws to prevent law enforcement personnel from chasing criminals on the highways for many offenses to protect innocent citizens. Opponents of such legislation argue that the criminals will quickly realize that all they have to do is run away in a motor vehicle to escape the law. It is imperative to have methods and effective devices to stop a fleeing vehicle. In the past, police officers have shot the tires of the fleeing vehicle, but that technique has been essentially abandoned due to safety concerns. There are available devices, such as spiked barrier strips, that if placed in front of the fleeing vehicle will puncture the tires. There are numerous reports of a criminal traveling at a high rate of speed losing control of the vehicle trying to avoid the strips with terrible results of bodily and property injury in some cases to the police officers laying out the strips. Further, it is difficult in most situations to safely get in front of the fleeing motor vehicle to deploy the device, which once deployed is a substantial risk to other vehicle drivers. Recent U.S. Pat. No. 6,715,395 to Heibel discloses projectile launcher capable of puncturing an inflated tire of a pursued vehicle. The improvement is improved accuracy and safety, but the device does not appear to be risk free in that any device capable of puncturing a tire could inflict substantial damage if it struck a collateral unintended target, such as an innocent bystander. Studies show that most chases are of short duration and most collisions occur in the first five minutes, so the device must be able to be used within a couple of minutes. There is a clear need for a safer non-lethal device to quickly and safely stop a fleeing vehicle from a following position. More particularly, the need is to bring the fleeing auto to a stop without impairing the pursued driver's ability to safely control the vehicle. The device must not leave debris on the roadway after use that causes a significant disruption of traffic and must have sufficient target specificity of minimize potential collateral damage. There are situations where the law enforcement person suspect there is a risk that suspects may attempt to flee in a vehicle and would like to disable that vehicle without damaging the vehicle or creating a risk of damage. A vehicle capturing device that is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,839,759 requires the chasing vehicle to contact and latch on to the fleeing vehicle with all the attendant risks of injury.
It is well known that plugging up the exhaust of an internal combustion engine, will quickly cause the engine to stall and will disable the vehicle powered by the engine until the plug is removed. The old prank of wedging a potato into the vehicle exhaust pipe has spawned a number of security devices installed in the exhaust pipes of vehicles to prevent unauthorized use of the vehicle. A remote controlled anti-theft device previously installed in the exhaust pipe is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,917,406 to Postel. An exhaust pipe plug to be locked on the end of a motor vehicle exhaust pipe is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,735 to Magrobi. Similarly, and exhaust pipe lock for internal combustion engines is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,249,442 to Wright and an exhaust blockage system for helicopter engines is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,401,590 to Conkley et al. An infrared suppressor plug for turbine engines is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,693,880 to Versqw et al., and an acoustical turbine engine tail pipe plug is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,240,519 to Wynosky. Non-lethal projectile systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,543,365 to Vasel et al. and Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0088367 to MacAleese et al., but the elements of the present invention and the use thereof are not disclosed or even suggested therein. A compressed-ring pneumatic pipe plug disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,481,465 to Warmerdam could possibly be installed in an exhaust pipe for a short period of time, there is no hint that this device could be used in a projectile or for the method of the present invention.
None of the above devices, methods or systems disclose the present invention, nor do they satisfy the needs described above or do they attain the objects of the present invention described below.